Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull DVD > Reviews > Time to call it a day, Mr. Harrison Ford?

Author's product rating:   

Did you enjoy it?	Indifferent to it
Story	Satisfactory
Characters / Performances	Unmemorable
Special Effects	Good
Soundtrack	Average

Advantages:	Good CGI, nice action scenes, easily watchable film
Disadvantages:	CGI over - used, unspectacular acting, poor ending

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

The long awaited addition to the popular Indiana Jones set of films delivers as much as expected. You're never going to get a top-drawer thriller when the main character is 60 years old, but Spielberg has worked around this quite well, and it's still a nice addition.

Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) is living out a nice life as a teacher, retired from his action-hero days, when his life is suddenly turned upside down by our pesky little friends from the Soviet Union.

After being kidnapped with his friend Mac (Ray Winstone) , he is forced to find an object of some interest inside a military base, and this kick starts the mayhem that will duly follow.

Following a code from an aged colleague, left demented from the 'crystal skull' , a legendary skull made entirely from pure quartz, Indiana and his teenage companion Mutt (Shia LaBeouf) head from Americas universities, to Peru, to the Amazon river, in order to stop the power-hungry scientist Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett) , who is right on their tail, from gaining dangerous powers from the skull.

We'll start with the negatives - and there are plenty of them. The first big criticism is the over-use of CGI effects. It's great when a film is made spectacular with these special effects, and at times it does, but their is simply too much. A film is respected more if it can produce amazing cinematography without having to waste vast amounts of budget on the effects.

Secondly, is the terribly obvious script and poor acting from Harrison Ford. Sadly, although I expected an obvious 'action-hero' performance (decent acting, but thrilling action scenes) , I was disappointed to see what a wooden performance he delivered, but in fairness, the material he had to work with wasn't great. Another slight error is with Cate Blanchett's poor Russian accent, which despite getting better towards the end, slipped all the time at the start.

But to be fair to the film, it wasn't all that bad. Although their was too much CGI, what they did have was pretty good, if a bit unrealistic, but that's what you have to expect in these sorts of films.

The biggest positive to come out of this film is the performance of Shia LaBeouf, who despite not acting spectacularly in this film, did act well, and has proved to be diverse. A big career looks set for this young man.

Everyone acts decently, the directing from Spielberg is good, and this film is sure to entertain anyone under the age of 13 easily. However, be warned. Without wanting to give anything away, the ending will leave many of you disappointed, and seems a bit shoddy.

All in all, a bit of a disappointment, but good enough to entertain the target audience. Alright for a watch, but don't expect a masterpiece.